In order to form the complex systems required to meet today's integrated electronics market, integrated circuits must contain a variety of active and passive elements all formed on a common substrate. For some applications, resistors having relatively large resistance values have become a limiting factor in the attempts to reduce the overall size of the integrated devices.
Typical techniques to construct resistors and integrated circuits involve the deposition or growth of semiconductive films on the outer surfaces of the semiconductor substrate or outer layers. Contact points are then made to the films and the area of the film and the spacing of the contacts are used to adjust the resistance value of the resistor. These techniques can effectively be used to create resistors having relatively low resistance values on the order of several ohms up to several hundred ohms in value. However, if a particular electronic circuit requires a resistor having a resistance of many thousands of ohms, these techniques will require the dedication of large portions of the substrate area to the formation of these resistors.